Power consumption

Cooling modern video cards is becoming more and more difficult, especially when users are asking for quiet cooling solutions. That's why the engineers are now paying much more attention to power consumption of new video card designs.

Test System
CPU:	AMD Athlon64 FX-60 @ 2900 MHz (Toledo, 2x 1024 KB Cache)
Motherboard:	Sapphire PC-A9RD580 ATI Radeon XPRESS 3200
Memory:	2x 1024MB G.Skill F1-4000BIU2-2GBHV CL3
Harddisk:	WD Raptor 360GD 36 GB
Power Supply:	OCZ GameXStream 700W
Software:	Windows XP SP2
Drivers:	NVIDIA: 91.47 ATI: Catalyst 7.1

In order to characterize a video card's power consumption, the whole system's mains power draw was measured. This means that these numbers include CPU, Memory, HDD, Video card and PSU inefficiency.

The three result values are as following:

• Idle: Windows sitting at the desktop (1024x768 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed.
• Average: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Average of all readings (two per second) while the test was rendering (no title screen).
• Peak: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Highest single reading

The power consumption is exactly what is to be expected from a downclocked X1900 GT. Requirements are fairly low, so most power supplies will have no problems supplying enough juice to your card.